Moving with the Magdalen: Late Medieval Art and Devotion in the Alps

by Joanne W. Anderson

Overview

Moving with the Magdalen is the first art-historical book dedicated to the cult of Mary Magdalen in the late medieval Alps. Its seven case study chapters focus on the artworks commissioned for key churches that belonged to both parish and pilgrimage networks in order to explore the role of artistic workshops, commissioning patrons and diverse devotees in the development and transfer of the saint's iconography across the mountain range. Together they underscore how the Magdalen's cult and contingent imagery interacted with the environmental conditions and landscape of the Alps along late medieval routes.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781350435841
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	05/30/2024
Pages:	268
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.63(d)

About the Author

Joanne Anderson (PhD 2010, Warwick) is Lecturer in 13th-17th Century History of Art at the Warburg Institute in London, UK.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations


Introduction
The Late Medieval Magdalen
Image, Faith and Place – Mary Magdalen in the Alps
Researching Mary Magdalen
Book Structure

Chapter One: Pilgrimage Politics and Late Medieval Art
A Toll of Devotion – Mary Magdalen in the Aosta Valley
Pilgrims' Progress and Experiential Objects
Art in an Age of Magdalen Fermentation
Scaling up the Map

Chapter Two: Regulating the Mountain Parish Saint
Sankt Magdalen in Dusch and its Paintings
A Habit of Choice
Art and the Premonstratensian Order
Imaging Mary Magdalen in a Mountain Parish
Last Things
Art and the Sacralising of the Mountains

Chapter Three: Networks of Devotion in Bozen
Sankt Magdalena in Prazöll - Renewing the Parish Saint
International Networks and the Pairing of Pilgrimage Saints
Mary Magdalen and the Regional Pilgrimage Context
Family Patronage and Networks – the von Brandis
Devotional Networks and Strategic Patronage
Up the Mountain with the Magdalen

Chapter Four: Framing Pilgrimage Practice in Tyrol
Framing Local History
The Universal Local Saint
The Imagery of Redemption

Chapter Five: Mining Devotion in the Mountains
Mining the Iconography of Mary Magdalen
'bonum argentum de Sneberch' - Working and Praying at the Coalface
Mary Magdalen and the Miners

Chapter Six: Alpine Workshops and Artistic Transmission
Santa Maria Maddalena, Cusiano - History and Decoration
The Magdalen Fresco Cycle
Art and Artistic Enterprise
Patrons and the Commission
Pathways of Transmission
Stock Types and Topicality

Chapter Seven: Devotion and Resurrection in the Alps
Mother of the Parish
Picturing a New Patron Saint
Reconstructing the Life of Mary Magdalen
Generating Faith
Cradle to Grave Care
Informing and Reforming the Parishes

Coda: The Alps as Kunstlandschaft

Bibliography

Editorial Reviews

Anderson has moved beyond a conventional art historical analysis to widen the boundaries of the study of religious art into the realms of visual culture, material culture, gender studies, and rural devotions … She has widened the study of Mary Magdalen into new geographic and iconographic territories.” —Reading Religion

“Moving with the Magdalen is a welcome addition to the scholarly study of the visual culture inspired by devotion to St. Mary Magdalen in the later Middle Ages. Its salutary innovation is to train our sights on relatively unknown terrain: the mountainous territories of the Maritime and Swiss Alps and the South Tyrol. Through a close examination of the visual material produced for what seems at first glance to be a group of unrelated religious sanctuaries in this landscape, Joanne W. Anderson convincingly demonstrates how the many pilgrimage, patronage, and artistic networks that criss-crossed these European mountain ranges served to connect vibrant local devotion to the flourishing universal cult of St. Mary Magdalen in the later medieval period. The book also showcases a wealth of unfamiliar visual evidence produced to honor the saint that no doubt will inspire a new generation of pilgrims-both scholarly and spiritual-to lace up their hiking books, strap on their backpacks, and make the physical ascent to see these marvelous images and artifacts in situ.” —Dr. Katherine Ludwig Jansen, Professor of History, Catholic University of America, USA

From the Publisher